©2005 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

03-13-05

Unity and Diversity

3/13/05 Unity and Diversity

 EPH 4:1 Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called...

Those are the words with which Paul introduces

his description of the approach to life

that will allow us to communicate with our actions

the truth about what has already taken place within our spirits.

I had an opportunity this past week

to speak out at Solid Rock Bible Camp for a couple of nights,

and as I was preparing for my time there

I got to thinking once again

about the remarkable simplicity of the basic arrangement

that our God has established with us through Christ.

As I understand it,

there are 4 basic principles

that form the foundation for the Christian’s walk with the King.

Prior to His entrance into our lives

we all live under the leadership

of our inner spirits that are in rebellion against our Creator.

But then, if we hear His voice,

and respond to His offer through Christ,

He (COL 2:14) ... cancels out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He takes it out of the way, (and) nails it to the cross.

And from that time on

He recreates us into His holy ones,

cleansed in spirit,

with hearts that love Him and long to please Him.

And the arrangement we then enter into with our God

is one that rests upon 4 major principles.

1. The first is what I like to call the grace foundation.

Paul explains it with such simplicity and clarity in the first 2 verses of Romans chapter 5.

Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand...

We have spent many weeks throughout the past years

talking about what that really means,

about the way in which our God

first brings us into His family by transferring all of our moral debt onto His Son.

But He doesn’t stop there.

He doesn’t just give us a second chance,

He gives us a whole new foundation for life with Him

by establishing an arrangement with us

in which we then continue to live the rest of eternity with Him on exactly the same basis -

with all of our moral debt forevermore transferred to the account of Christ.

This GRACE in which we stand!

2. Then, the second pillar of this arrangement given to us in Christ

is His creation within us of a new heart.

The author of Hebrews,

using quotations from the Old Testament,

says it so well.

Heb. 10:16-17 " This is the covenant that I will make with them After those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws upon their heart, And upon their mind I will write them," He then says, “And their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more."

Before we come to Christ

we think we should be good,

after we come to Christ

we wish we could be good!!!

The first is driven by a sense of moral guilt,

the second is the direct result of the creation of that new heart within us.

3. Then, the third pillar of this arrangement

that has been established between us and our God through Christ

is His commitment to live through us.

Paul sais it perfectly in Galatians 2:20.

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.

4. And then, the last pillar of this relationship

is that remarkable daily working of the Spirit of God in our lives

in which He seeks to reveal to us His love

so that we can then respond to that love

as the root motivation in our lives.

That is what Paul is talking about in Romans 5:5 when he says,

... the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

That is Job #1 for God’s Spirit in our lives.

In fact that is His only job.

Everything He does both within us and through us

is done with the goal of revealing to us greater depths of the love of our God for us.

I received a number of excellent e-mails this past week,

and several of them illustrate so well

the reality of these 4 pillars in the Christian’s life.

One of them was from my nephew, Jeremy Davis.

A number of you have asked me how he and Michelle are doing

following the death of their three daughters a few weeks ago.

It goes without saying

that their entire family faces tremendous daily battles,

but I asked Jer for his permission

to read one of the notes I received from him this week

because it illustrates better than anything else I know

the reality of those pillars within the life of the believer.

The note read,

“Larry, I am off to take some guys caribou hunting till wed afternoon. I just returned from a flight to the South fork of the Hoholitna River this morning-I had a wonderful time singing and praying to God on the way out and back...I wanted to share some words that God helped me come up with on that flight.

This present agony does far outweigh the sum of my failures up to this point, which I consider many. All my past regrets become as glittering gold, when placed in the shadow of the loss of my three precious jewels. All else except God alone does cease to have meaning or importance.

I will continue to Pursue my God from this day forward...Jeremy”

Now, where does that type of response come from

in the wake of such incredible loss?

It comes from those 4 pillars

built into the life of the Christian by God Himself

in response to our faith in Christ.

And then, a day later I received another e-mail,

this one from one of our students who will be going with Gary and Jill to Belize.

She’d written out her testimony in preparation for the trip

and wanted me to read it.

Listen to this!

“God has been showing me how He feels about me. It is very awesome. I have a new heart. It is not deceitful above all things or desperately wicked. God knows everything about me and does not have any condemning thoughts towards me. He already took away all my sins and threw them as far as the east is from the west. When God looks at me He sees the beautiful person He created. He knows me backwards and forwards. I want to know Him. He wants me. He loves me.

Have you ever heard, “It’s not about me, it’s about God?” Well, I’m learning it’s about God AND me, together. God created people for friendship with Him. I don’t have to try to please him or do things for him or make sure that I’m always in his will or confess every sin. I just sit in his arms and we go through life together. He helps me and loves me all the time. When I was really young I learned about God, who He is, and I wanted him. Ever since then I know that nothing I do can get me to God and nothing I do can take me from Him. God just wants me…me! I want to know Him better. I trust Him. He has me. We love each other.

Don’t you wish sometimes that you could see God? That he would just come sit down beside you and give you a hug? That you could see his face, feel his hands? I wish that terribly. That Jesus would talk to me out loud and explain things. So many times I want him to tell me what to do or say. To figure out why in the world I have these problems and keep making these same mistakes.

Once I was at a place where I was being taught how to tell people about God and the Bible. I remember one day where I couldn’t quite get it right and I kept messing up. I tried to study better so I could present it correctly. It was my first taste of false religion. Finally, I walked down to a mossy soft spot in the woods by a lake and started crying. I was feeling overwhelmed. I called to God with my real voice and said “I want you right here. I need you. Please come hold me and talk with me. Why aren’t you here? Real? Please come. I want you so bad.” After a while my sobbing turned to sniffles and I felt peaceful. I had left it all behind and come to Him. And He Was there. Real.

My most longing desire now is to be able to come into His presence and hear what he’s telling me. To have a back and forth conversation. To know him well. To smile when he says something funny. To pray seriously for whomever He lays on my heart. To be united in thought and spirit. To share all of my life with Jesus forever.

Psalm 103:8 Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way to go, for to you I lift up my soul.”

Now, don’t you wish you would have understood that when you were still in your teens?

I know I do.

Do you know what that is?

That’s those 4 pillars

doing what God designed them to do within us.

The grace foundation,

the new heart He’s created within us,

the promise of His life lived through us,

and His Spirit revealing His love to us in a way that forms our new motivation for life.

So, then, if these four pillars are in place within us,

why do we so often continue to have so much trouble

when it comes to living out these truths in our lives?

And why,

when we come to the second half of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians,

do we see him needing to take three chapters

to carefully explain to us

the kind of choices he wants us to make

in order for this life of Christ within us

to be revealed through us in our daily lives?

Well, the short answer to that question

is because our spirits know the truth,

but our minds, our memories, and our emotions do not.

There are times in our lives

when the churning dust of our daily routines settles just enough

so that we can see through it to our spirits

and sense the truth.

That is, I think,

what was happening with those two e-mails I just shared with you.

That’s what happens to some degree in my own life

when I sit down each week

to write up my notes for our times together.

But when I complete that process and reenter the daily routines of life

I, just like you,

am once again faced with the lifelong process

of making choices in each new situation

that are consistent with the truth I have glimpsed through the Spirit of God.

And a crucial ingredient in that process

is what Paul calls “the renewal of the mind” in Romans 12:2.

ROM 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

It is learning to think in ways that are consistent with this new life God has created within our spirits.

It is remarkable but true that the Christian knows all sorts of truths at the spirit level

that his or her mind knows nothing about,

or more common, that the mind totally rejects.

We know, for example, at the spirit level

that our God is indeed absolutely and perfectly good,

that He loves us with a perfect love,

and yet our minds and emotions frequently wrestle with that truth,

even reject it,

believing instead that God and His ways are not to be trusted.

We know at the spirit level

that our God holds us securely in the palm of His hand,

that He will indeed never leave us, never forsake us,

and that He will sustain our deepest needs every moment of every day,

carrying us in His love right up until He sets us down in the presence of the Father.

Our spirits know that truth, but our minds and emotions know almost nothing of it,

and so we fear,

and we doubt,

and we hide,

and we cling to all sorts of little bits of nothing in this world

with the hope that it will bring us some measure of security.

And a crucial part of the battle we face as Christians

is our replacing the lies that dominate our thinking

with the truths that then allow us to think in ways that are more consistent with the way things really are.

But to do that

we need clear, correct knowledge.

And that is why Paul does what he does

in the second half of his letter to the Ephesians.

He knows our spirits long for a Christian walk

that is truly worthy of the calling that has come to us through Christ.

But he also knows that we haven’t got a clue

about what that really means,

and left to ourselves

we would very likely come up with some sort of worthless religious facade.

And so he gives us the truth we need,

and it’s not surprising that some of what he gives us

looks very different from what we might have expected.

Now, I know we’ve been sort of inching our way through the opening verses of this 4^th chapter,

and I reserve the right to return to some of what we have here

in the event I decide we need to look more closely at it in the future,

but for the rest of our time this morning

I’m going to pick up the pace considerably

because there is something happening in the first half of this forth chapter

that makes it necessary for us to see this section of the letter as a unit.

We have seen already

that the first thing Paul does for us

as he begins this conversation about the worthy walk

is to extend to every believer

the fervent hope and calling

that we are each personally (EPH 4:3) ...diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

In fact, the words he uses

in his presentation of this plea

carry with them an intensity of feeling

that is impossible to miss.

He says, Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you ...

This is no passive third person suggestion

that it would be good for all believers to work on these things.

This is Paul calling up all of his authority,

and all of his personal credibility with his readers,

saying to us in effect, “If you do nothing else for me, please do this.”

And we’ve seen, too,

that after giving us the calling,

he then gives us the logical, reasonable basis for our compliance.

EPH 4:4-6 There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.

Whether we choose to believe it or not,

whether we choose to act like it or not,

whether our doctrinal statements confirm it or not,

the truth is there is only one Body of Christ on this earth,

there is only one Holy Spirit who indwells every child of God,

there is only one Lord Jesus Christ,

and only one saving faith - the faith that recognizes and receives the death of Christ in our place for our sins,

and only one baptism - our baptism into Christ Himself - that baptism that forevermore results in our spirits being immersed “in Christ”,

and there is only one God and Father of all.

Our own particular church doctrines and traditions

frequently rob us of the power of these truths,

but no matter what we may choose to believe or not believe personally,

it does not change the reality of what really is.

It is both tragic and remarkable

that we Christians can so often

find so many doctrinal differences to fight over among ourselves.

I’m in no way suggesting that our doctrines don’t matter.

They matter tremendously.

To the degree they are consistent with who God really is,

God uses them to give us hope,

and strength,

and courage when nothing else can.

But they were never intended to be clubs

with which we attack one another,

and whenever we use them as such

we deny the truth of the unity we all share in Christ,

and destroy one of our Lord’s greatest gifts to us.

Well, no matter what turmoil,

or what frustration,

or what logical absurdities our doctrinal battles between one another my generate at times,

Paul’s words are absolute truth,

and as such they are intended to form the foundation

for every contact we will ever have

with every true believer we will ever meet,

no matter what room within the household of God they my come from.

There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.

But what I want to point out to us here this morning before we close

is the kind a fascinating contrast that takes place in the next thing Paul says.

After reminding us of all the things we share that provide our basis for unity,

he then goes on to tell us about the one area in which we have tremendous diversity.

He says,

EPH 4:7-8, 11-13 But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore it says, "When He ascended on high, He led captive a host of captives, And He gave gifts to men." And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

We’ll look more closely in the coming weeks

at the specific gifts mentioned by Paul in this passage,

but I just want to end this morning

by pointing out the contrast Paul is using

between the unity and the diversity that God has built into the body of Christ.

He starts out by pointing out all those things that every believer shares in common,

all of those things that form the basis

for our unity with one another.

Then he goes on to say that there is, indeed, one area in which we all differ from one another.

It is in the unique gifts given to each of us by our Lord.

But then, after pointing out that diversity,

he brings it right back around once again

by telling us that, if we use our diversity correctly,

if we are doing what God has called us to do

as He wants us to do it,

the result will be that we will all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

You see, even our diversity,

when used for the purpose God intended,

will strengthen our unity with one another.

And if it does not,

then we are abusing the gifts given to us by our God.

Well, we are out of time

and I didn’t get near as far as I’d intended,

but that will at least serve as an introduction

to what we will look at next week.